There is a famous saying, which dates from the times of persecution, that ‘the blood of Martyrs is the seed of the Church.’ It may be added in the like spirit that the voice of Holy Scripture is the spring and measure of individual faith. Both statements require to be modified in their application; but it remains generally true that the society which is founded by human devotion and labour, is quickened in its several members by the influence of the Word. So it is that the history of the vernacular Scriptures is in a great measure the history of personal faith. A people which is without a Bible in its mother tongue, or is restrained from using it, or willfully neglects it, is also imperfect, or degenerate, or lifeless in its apprehension of Christian Truth, and proportionately bereft of the strength which flows from a living Creed (B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3).